


At the Devil's Knee

by Delphi



Category: Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse, Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Childhood, Drama, M/M, Master/Servant, Servants, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-17
Updated: 2011-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeeves is inspired very early in life by one hell of a butler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Devil's Knee

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 round of Kink Bingo. Kink: "Worship"

Life was rarely as simple, Reginald Jeeves often reflected, as to allow a man to look back upon his years and state with absolute certainty that _this_ event was truly of the importance it had seemed at the time, or _that_ chance meeting had irreversibly shaped one's character. If the path of life were a river, it was one with swift currents and multiple tributaries, full of darting fish and tangling weeds and meandering driftwood. There was, however, the occasional stone: immovable and immortal (at least on the minuscule scale of time that made up a human lifespan), planted firmly in the sediment and permanently diverting the water’s flow.

Jeeves is reminded of this each time he wakes from uncomfortable dreams of burning embers and recalls with undiminished fascination the day he encountered the singular butler of Earl Ciel Phantomhive. Being possessed of a prodigious memory and having found his own calling in service, perhaps it is no surprise that he remembers the meeting so clearly. However, the ink with which it was inscribed has proven curiously indelible, never fading even when memories of like provenance have dimmed. If anything, it seems to grow clearer each time he recalls it.

Here it is. He was four years old, or five at most, and living on the estate of Lord and Lady Kettleby, where his father was employed as the gardener and his mother as a cook. He was not yet of schooling age, but he could read well enough, and in the lull between breakfast and elevenses, he had hidden himself in the pantry with one of the young mistress's schoolbooks. There he lay, invisible behind a sack of flour, when the kitchen door opened and two sets of unfamiliar legs entered.

"Honestly, Sebastian, this visit is an utter waste of my time."

This, from somewhere above a pair of sky-blue knee socks.

"The Kettlebys are your cousins, my lord. A visit with them is always advantageous, and if anyone has information about the nasty business at hand, it will be them."

This voice belonged to the owner of two very long legs in very black trousers. They were so black, in fact, that young Jeeves—who was not long past knee-high and no stranger to secret scuffs and stains—found his attention thoroughly seized. He peered over the bag of flour and then, against what better judgement he possessed at that age, crept up to the top steps of the pantry for a better view.

What he saw amazed him. The butler, Sebastian, was a figure unlike any he had seen before. He was astonishingly tall, and while his hair was what Mrs. Stibbons the housekeeper would call "a haystack and a half," his clothes were, without hyperbole, _impossibly_ pristine. His heeled shoes were shined to a high gloss, and yet they somehow reflected nothing around him, not even the fire. His waistcoat, tailcoat and tie were as black as his trousers, and his shirt and gloves were dazzlingly white. His watch chain was silver, untarnished, but it too somehow shone without reflecting the light.

There was something... _foreign_ about the man. It was something that Jeeves, being only four or five and having met only Englishmen and Irishmen and gypsies, could not then articulate. He only knew that the young mistress's copybook came to mind, with its morality tales about biblical forefathers and classical heroes. He thought of the black pen and ink illustrations of large men in strange garb, and, more insidiously, of the head cook’s fairy stories.

"Why don't I make you a cup of chocolate with soothing spices, my lord?"

Jeeves shivered, even though the pantry was quite warm. Lord and Lady Kettleby had two children around his own age, and he was familiar with the bribing of spoilt young masters and mistresses with sweets. He was not jealous, however. Rather, he was fascinated by the absolute authority in the butler's voice—how he spoke as though the world would assuredly be made better with the proper application of chocolate. In what might have been his first bout of self-critical thinking, he realised that while he ought to wish he were the one being offered chocolate, he in fact wished to be the one offering it.

"Very well,” the owner of the knee socks muttered. Then he visibly shuddered as the always gay Lady Kettleby shrieked with laughter somewhere upstairs. "Just don't leave me alone with these people."

Jeeves began to frown, not entirely taking his meaning but perceiving the slight. Then his expression froze and his breath caught in his throat as the butler turned, standing closer to his master than Jeeves had yet seen upstairs and downstairs meet.

"Need I remind you, my young master..."

Jeeves held his breath, straining to hear the soft words.

"...that I will be with you always, until the very end?"

The butler's hand rose to his master's cheek, but it did not make contact. Instead, the man reached gracefully down and retied his master's cravat in three smooth, precise movements. It was then that Jeeves fully perceived the difference in size between the two. To his childish mind, they were both grown men, but later, when he was himself grown and the memory was still with him, he would make subtle inquiries and learn—to his own strange lack of surprise—of Earl Ciel Phantomhive's unfortunate fate, and the fact that at the time of this visit, the young noble could not have been more than twelve or thirteen years old.

It should seem monstrous, then, the eroticism with which the memory has become imbued. He cannot muster disgust for himself, however. No matter how he has since flushed and hardened and writhed in his sleep over the image of the two, the reality of it remains distant. It is like the paederasty of the Greeks, shrouded in myth and mystery. No, he cannot banish the image with moral will, and the child he was looked on in innocence, fascinated by the difference in size between them, as if their ranks were somehow reversed.

Jeeves peered around the edge of the doorway, watching the butler's face as his long, gloved fingers danced along the blue silk of the cravat. The man's narrow, heretofore stoic mouth curved into a smile, and it was beautiful. Jeeves knew nothing of irony yet, and all he saw in that smile was complete satisfaction. It was as if tending to this small need had fed something inside the butler, something that a quietly restless child such as Jeeves was only beginning to perceive. It was a look of utter contentment.

Then the butler drew back and, moving so gracefully that there was not even a whisper of sound, began to seek out the pots and the cream and the spoons. Jeeves meant to return to his hiding place, but so quiet were the butler's catlike footsteps that he was quickly caught out, looking up suddenly from a perfectly polished black shoe on the pantry step, along an impossible length of black wool, to stern and seemingly unsurprised eyes. They were a strange colour, like the dining room table, which Mrs. Stibbons called mahogany.

The butler raised a finger to his lips, indicating silence. Jeeves nodded slowly, unblinking but biddable, trying to figure out how a man so tall could move so lightly. Then the butler's finger lowered, and he mouthed a query: 'Chocolate?'

Still staring, Jeeves pointed away at the top shelf on the left-hand side. And here is where his memory falters—where it assuredly has failed—because he cannot recall if the butler smiled, or if his countenance remained firm. Reginald Jeeves could not, in that moment, see the butler's mouth at all. He could only see his eyes. Eyes that for an instant glowed red, as if all the firelight in the room that could not touch the black of his clothing or the silver of his watch chain had coalesced inside them.

"Hurry up, Sebastian," the young master in knee socks called.

"Of course," Sebastian replied, unruffled, and he took down the chocolate before leaving the pantry on silent feet, stirring not a mote dust in his wake.

The door closed, shutting out the light. Jeeves was not afraid of the dark, least of all in the pantry where the smell of dry goods and root vegetables and the earthen floor grounded him. He found himself breathless, however, clutching his borrowed book in sweaty hands. His heartbeat quickened as the image of absolute black and white etched itself into his memory and a red ember of envy and awe and dearest ambition began to smoulder in his heart. He shut his eyes, and though he did not know it then, something settled inside him with the inevitability of a heavy stone sinking into wet earth, never to be moved again.


End file.
